This is The Thread for the Star Wars III Leak

it's really that moving? awesome!

www.vcdquality.org

But I would probably wait until the second or third version unless someone like TUN or VideoCD really pulls out the stops - the first will probably be a very shaky "Cam" with sound recorded from the camcoders mic, but wait a few days or weeks if you're unlucky) and you'll get a "Telesync" - or even better a "Telecine" - with rock-solid picture and directly dubbed DTS sound.

-- N_RQ (bl0cke...), May 12th, 2005.

Exactly, I saw episode II for nearly the same deal (a dollar theater in Omaha) and still felt ripped off. Well maybe that Yoda fight was worth a dollar, but the rest certainly wasn't.

You keep forgetting a decent download will mean you can burn to DVD and then just watch with friends, booze, and substances.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,4267,1482359,00.html

(note: I haven't seen Star Wars in ages, don't really care about it, and have never seen any of the prequels)

Seems like a classic case of wanting to like something far more than you actually do.

I do think that he's trying to be a big ol' fanboy, I guess to prove he's still young or something. It's a shame that he has to latch on to bad movies to prove that.

http://filmforce.ign.com/starwars/articles/613/613366p1.html

"The idea is that over time, there were new clone strains introduced, and then they even conscripted guys to be Storm Troopers. So it's not just purely clones: It started out as clones, but then it got diluted over the years as they found out they could shanghai guys [more cheaply] than they could build clones."

Jesus H., you realize Kevin Smith is going to direct an episode where a Star Wars variant of Jay and Silent Bob get wackily recruited by the stormtroopers OH THE HILARITY. Maybe Darth cuts their heads off.

xpost

This statement is either slightly wrong, or dripping with gooey, delicious sarcasm. I honestly can't tell which.

And about Jar-Jar Binks: "He goes back to Naboo and he's a representative. He probably stays on the council, he's probably in the senate, because it becomes completely worthless. Senators are just for show, which they talk about in Episode IV. Actually, in Episode IV they get disbanded, so Jar Jar probably goes home to his wife and kids."
FUCK! HE DOESN'T DIE?

What, you want to tie down Portman and force...uh, never mind.
Use the force on her and Carrie Fisher and some of those babe-liens seen elsewhere in the trilogies?

What's wrong with it? I'm talking about the completion of the Star Wars saga, which despite overall atrocious dialogue, frequent bad acting, pandering to Burger King, and Jar Jar Binks, is nothing less than a cultural colossus that has changed the way movies are made, marketed and even watched.

Going out of their way to point out that Portman was perfectly physically healthy and died of heartbreak is the lamest thing ever. She was just TOO FEMININE to LIVE.

There's something brain-confounding about these films having been made in the wrong order. It's quite depressing to look at these Important Babies at the end and realise that the people who actually play them later in the story are already washed up old fucks.

This gets me thinking back to something someone said in the above din of comments, that Lucas perhaps specified little or no emotions (or still emotions, rather) by the actors, trying to give it all a Shakespearean or dry Victorian or whatever feel. If so, this definitely holds with this event, which seems more like something out of a 19th century novel, and the oridnary, matter-of-fact way in which they show her naming the kids.

Then again that's a weak excuse.

*"If you don't like it, you're a fanboy stuck in the past."

(note: I never bothered to see Attack of the Clones, but I might now).

I think that these films work a lot better as a set of movies made 25 years after the other ones. I know they're set before, but if you think of cinema as a representation of a story rather than the ACTUAL THING, the changes in special effects and the flashier looking sets are completely forgivable. So the final scenes were quite effective, I thought, at merging the look and feel of both trilogies.

totally agree, only you're complaining about the CGI LAVA at the same time!

(Saw it again last night on a digital screen. I think that whole process is a bit overrated, I really didn't notice any difference.)

and this is the best review so far:

...Twisted by McDiarmid, and to nobody's surprise, Christiansen turns to the dark side and fights against his fellow Jedis, even killing some kids. Although, here they are called Younglings. I shit you not. Those sci-fi people have crazy names for everything. These creatures on another planet can look like humans and speak perfect English, but they can't say "kids." Man, it makes you think you're really in outer space for a moment.

[...]

The dialog sucks Clydesdale cock and the characters don't seem to be driven by anything I could care about.

[..]

The scenes between Christiansen and Portman are supposed to show us a powerful, nearly obsessive love. They don't. They just say what you can buy in a Hallmark card and give to someone when you don't really mean it. Real behavior that shows you can't live without someone is late night phone calls made from phone booths because you're too fucking drunk to press those tiny keys on a cell phone. Calls that go on from your end way after she's hung up as you argue with the dial tone and then beg for its forgiveness. It means getting thrown out and then butting your head against the front door until she lets you back in, not out of pity, but because she can't sleep with that thumping. Lucas thinks a few cornball lines like "I will always love you" convey the message as successfully as Christiansen carving her initials into his wrist with a protractor needle....

I think it couldn't be more obvious in the transformation sequence, esp. when Vader breaks his manacles and lurches off of a fucking slab!

Trouble is, it's so literal that there's no aha there. It's just comedy. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if Darth and Palpatine had busted out a credible "Puttin' On The Ritz."

...

I am now picturing this, and it is very funny. Can I enlist some flash animation help please? Please?

So lipsmackingly eager to get his hands on that torsolicious (and, note to Tuomas, perfectly-waxed) young Jedi. Though, come to think of it, you never do see any Lady Siths, do you? Power of the Dark Side indeed...

Anakin: You look beautiful today.

Padme: That's because I am in love.

Anakin: No, I am in love, and therefore beautiful as well.

Padme: We are beautiful because we are in love. Hold me, like you did at the Red Roof Inn in Rapid City.

In one of their scenes, Portman, who spends most of the film hanging out in her apartment, is wearing an odd bit of leather headgear that suggests she is either about to go out for a scrimmage with Red Grange or will be joining Snoopy to hunt for the Red Baron. The distracting wardrobe choices are almost as sloppily inattentive as the dialogue. In the Star Wars cycle, the characters speak in lofty, greeting card language that is to actual English what Albert Speer's Nazi monumentalist buildings were to architecture. Yet, as long as everyone talks in this odd sort of way, at least the film has an internal consistency. That goes out the window twice in Sith, when Portman is momentarily receiving signals from a John Hughes film. "I'm pregnant. What're we gunna do?" she asks. Gunna? Ms. Portman, you're the princess of Naboo, not Jersey City...

http://www.yesnetwork.com/yankees/news.asp?news_id=1130

One thing that really made sense, especially during Return of the Jedi, was the cheesy soap-opera like nature of the story. I payed close attention to the dialog to see if it was really as bad as the new trilogy but it just seemed different. In the original trilogy the dialog was much more melodramatic, and even though it was corny in parts, you can tell the actors really got into it and tried to stretch the whole space epic thing for maximum emotional effect.

After watching the original trilogy this weekend I agree – and it's not nostalgia talking. What makes, for example, the lightsaber duel in Ep IV between Obi-Wan and Vader so effective is that both men fight like old men; Alec Guinness' age and David Prowse's clumsiness help their performances (especially Vader, who fights like he hasn't a good duel in years).

That too, but there's also a sense of ritual to it, and mystery. A sense that when two lightsabers are drawn, a set of rules comes into play that is older than the combatants and bigger than whatever set of circumstances has brought them to this moment.

It's precisely what's lacking in SITH - a sense that there's anything particularly special about the Jedi, their history, their folkways... anything worth fighting for, anything we should mourn the loss of when they are betrayed and hunted down and their temple set to the torch.

Instead, it's a big "so what." Seen one lightsaber duel, seen 'em all.

But dammit, they were Samurai once, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

The only moment that captures this in SITH (the only moment, really, where I stopped chuckling and started caring) is when the (last?) Jedi, er, youngling, hesitating not for a moment, takes on an armed-to-the-teeth clone squad to defend Senator Smits. Knee-high, this kid is, probably still has a baby tooth or two. And comes within a tragic hair's breadth of smiting every one of their clone asses. And you realize, whoa, that's what a Jedi was.

And then the moment passes and it's more blah blah Behold The Power Of My Backdrop Painters! etc

I was sympathetic to the Jedi throughout, Order 66 was some flat out cold shit, almost in the way Cypher pulls the plug on his shipmates one by one in The Matrix. This is as emotional about these things as big corporate action movies really get.

This fits in with what I think has been the massive undercurrent throughout all three prequel movies, though -- that the Jedi as an organization have become so entrenched that they have not so much lost their ideals or only pay them lip service as they have compromised them. If you want to play out the balance of the Force idea a bit: Anakin helps bring down the old Jedi as organized and then eventually brings down a Sith lord while no apprentice follows. In that respect, he did what he was 'supposed' to do.

Now, the idea that the Jedi have been all too human instead of being this mystical organization has rankled a few folks (slocki, step up! ;-) ). But here's something interesting to consider -- in episodes I and II, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan both use their mind trick stuff almost casually, like it will get them out of anything and everything. Consider how in II Obi-Wan sends the 'death stick' dude packing and implies he's going to change his entire personality thanks to Obi-Wan fucking with him almost casually, like there was nothing questionable about it. Played for laughs, but still, hmm.

In New Hope, meanwhile -- another bar setting. Obi-Wan *did* use the mind tricks to squeeze pass the stormtroopers but in the bar, he neither uses them to help deal with the dudes about to fuck up Luke, nor, interestingly, does he use them at all on Han and Chewie. How much easier would it have been for Obi-Wan to just use them in those situations?

This is all back-filled justification, of course. That's the whole point! Still, though...

imho you're half-right: all subsequent battles outclass it technically. But they do the opposite of undermining it - they merely render lightsaberplay trivial. Again, there's no sense of gravitas, just a long, lazy string of "and then they fight"s

it's like in the first ALIEN. The fact that there was no tech/budget to build and animate the thing makes the hide and seek game that much scarier, and the final reveal (accomplished by camera pan) that much more intense.

That, my friend, is one elegant retcon. Unfortunately, it's far too subtle for the clumsy literalist Lucas turned out to be. If the Genius of Marin had wanted us to be aware of this reading, He would, in His wisdom, have pounded us over the head with it until we screamed for His mercy, which would not be forthcoming.

The notion that the all-too-human Jedi had reached a dead-end of arrogance and ossification is intriguing and powerful, and I think it's there in the text, but I don't think it's the story Lucas thinks he's telling. More's the pity, since the weight of tragedy is precisely what's missing.

This is precisely why I enjoy the film(s) as pageant with me reading whatever the hell I want into them. ;-)

Ah, for some reason, I thought you were referring to their powers in general.

I think the reaction comparisons to the Beatles are apt. There are some pop culture fixtures that affect people deeper/longer/in greater numbers, though going into why will probably sound ridiculous here - or redundant (haven't read ALL 800+ posts). But it feels much different than say, nostalgia for Welcome back Kotter or feathered hair or (with all the criticism of cheap space serials) Battlestar Gallactica.

Gene Simmons' tongue comes immediately to mind...

This is incredibly OTM. I meant to sit down and watch a few sections of the first volume, but I couldn't stop watching. One of the things that I actually was looking forward to in the prequels was the idea of what actual jedis at the height of their power and training would be like. There was a bit of it in The Phantom Menace, but Jesus, it's nowhere close to the Clone Wars. It kicks ass, and I say this as someone who is neither a fan of war films (more specifically battle films) or someone who generally says "it kicks ass".